Making Strides Walk at Jones Beach set for Oct. 21

WABC reporter helps kick off preparations for country's largest event

Posted
Friday, September 7, 2018 5:11 pm

Stacey Sager, an “Eyewitness News” reporter, recently served as the emcee for a breakfast in Woodbury to kick off preparations for the American Cancer Society’s Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Walk at Jones Beach State Park on Oct. 21. The walk is the largest such fundraiser in the country, with tens of thousands of participants each year.

Scott Brinton/Herald

Breast cancer survivors were given pink balloons at the breakfast. At front was Brenda Litzky, of Blue Point.

Scott Brinton/Herald

Making Strides fast facts

There are more than 3.5 million breast cancer survivors in the U.S.

In 2018, an estimated 266,120 women and 2,550 men will be diagnosed with breast cancer. In New York alone, 17,890 will be diagnosed.

The American Cancer Society’s Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walks raise $60 million a year nationally to support cancer patients, survivors and researchers, with more than $870 million raised since 1993.

Stacey Sager was diagnosed with breast cancer in the late 1990s, at age 30. She fought the disease, undergoing a double mastectomy, and survived. She reported in 1999 on her diagnosis and treatment for “Eyewitness News” on WABC-TV in New York City, for which she has been an on-air reporter since 1996.

Nearly a decade and a half later, in 2011, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Again, she survived and reported on her treatment for “Eyewitness News.”

That year, Sager learned she carried the genetic mutations that cause breast cancer and ovarian cancer. That wasn’t entirely unexpected. Cancer had struck five generations of women in her family. Sager’s mother died of breast cancer at age 44.

####2018 marks the 25th anniversary of the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Walk on Long Island. Last year, 65,000 people took part in the walk, raising $3 million. Organizers said they hope to top that figure this year. Proceeds will support cancer researchers, patients and survivors.

This year, Herald Community Newspapers is serving as a media sponsor of the Jones Beach walk, along with WABC-TV, WBAB 102.3 and WBLI 106.1.

Sager, who lives in Nassau County with her husband and two young daughters, told the audience of more than 750 at the Crest Hollow County Club in Woodbury that cancer patients must think of themselves as survivors. “You’re a survivor the minute you hear the words, ‘You have cancer,’” she said.

Of the more than 200 Making Strides walks across the country, the Jones Beach walk is the largest. It is held each year in October, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Researchers have made big strides in understanding the origins of cancer and developing treatments for it — the breast cancer death rate, for example, dropped 39 percent between 1989 and 2015, according to the American Cancer Society.

“The fight,” however, “is far from over,” Sager said. “This is a Long Island fight.”